


Much Ado About Biscuits

by anoyo



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-10
Updated: 2011-06-10
Packaged: 2017-10-20 07:33:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/210284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anoyo/pseuds/anoyo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When John left for Bart’s in the morning, he would do the kind of things he thought any reasonable flatmate ought to do and pick up after himself, make sure the morning paper was inside the flat, and leave Sherlock a note about where he was going.  Sometime around the third month that they’d been living together, John started thinking that maybe, just maybe, Sherlock could be expected to do things, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Much Ado About Biscuits

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Much ado about biscuits, by [misura](http://misura.livejournal.com). I absolutely stole the [prompt](http://anoyo.livejournal.com/181626.html) for the title, because it is PERFECT. And she is brilliant, for coming up with it. I'm fairly certain this is not at all what she was expecting, but, you know, it was 100% what my mind came up with. Wouldn't let me write anything else, to be honest. By the way, if you click the "prompt" link above, I'm still accepting prompts, and likely will be for a while. Might as well check, eh? **Major Note** : Not edited.

It started as an annoyance.

When John left for Bart’s in the morning, he would do the kind of things he thought any reasonable flatmate ought to do and pick up after himself, make sure the morning paper was inside the flat, and leave Sherlock a note about where he was going.

 _Gone to Bart’s for work, back at 5 or 6. J_

Sometime around the third month that they’d been living together, John started thinking that maybe, just maybe, Sherlock could be expected to do things, too. Like, perhaps, go to the mart during the day so that John wouldn’t have to after work. It was a reasonable expectation, he thought. After all, they’d survived many harrowing situations together, Sherlock had expressed concern over John’s well-being with that Moriarty nutjob, what was an item or two to pick up during the day? If they didn’t have a case, it wasn’t like Sherlock did anything but sit around, anyway. And so John’s notes became,

 _Gone to Bart’s, back at 6. Can you pick up milk and biscuits? J_

The first time there were no milk or biscuits, John wrote it off as Sherlock having miraculously found something to do with his day, and picked them up himself. Weeks two, three, and four, and he realized Sherlock was deliberately ignoring him.

That was fine; perhaps the request was too daunting. John could create an easier request, if that was what Sherlock needed. There were, after all, many different kinds of milk and biscuits, and on occasion John changed the type of milk that they bought, depending on what was on sale. Sherlock, on the other hand, refused to eat any but a particular kind of biscuit, so that was likely the better option. That was John’s next attempt.

 _Gone to Bart’s, back at 6. Can you pick up biscuits? J_

He was, however, disappointed once again. John was nothing if not dogged and resourceful, and so a solution presented itself to him: if he did not pick up any biscuits at all, Sherlock would then be forced to acquire his own.

Rather, this happened:

Shortly after returning home after three days of pointedly not buying biscuits, Mrs Hudson knocked on the door to the flat, and upon John’s opening of the door, handed John a box of biscuits.

“Sherlock asked me to pick these up when I went to get my own groceries, though I’m not your housekeeper, boys,” she said amiably. John thanked her, then closed the door, turning with the biscuits still in his hands.

John simply stared at the box for a few moments before bursting into slightly hysterical laughter. He took the box into Sherlock’s room, where Sherlock was working on something that John was remaining purposely ignorant of, and asked, “Is this how you got all of your groceries before I came along? Preying on innocent women?”

Sherlock glanced up at John, then to the box in his hands. “What does the manner in which we acquire biscuits matter?” he asked brusquely.

“I suppose it doesn’t,” John replied, shaking his head. “Though you really ought to do things for yourself.”

“I’m busy,” Sherlock said, going straight back to his work, dismissing John entirely.

John took the biscuits to the kitchen and resolved to continue leaving Sherlock notes. Maybe, eventually, he would learn. More likely, he would be confused by the frivolity.

That marked the stage in which it was just amusing.

John would leave Sherlock a note when he went to work, if they needed something and John didn’t have time to obtain it, and it would appear in their apartment. John wasn’t deluded enough to think that Sherlock actually went out and got it himself, but at least things were getting done, which, really, had been the point all along, hadn’t it?

And then he got the call, one dreary afternoon when they had been living together for a little less than a year. It was a short call, barely two minutes long, but John dreaded all that it entailed.

So, instead of dealing with it himself, he left a note.

 _Gone to Bart’s, back at 6. Can you pick up biscuits and Harry from Heathrow at quarter four? She’ll be staying with us for a day or two. J_

It just seemed so much _less_ , written like that in a note. Still horrid and likely to give him an ulcer, but less all the same.

John did rather wish he could see Sherlock’s face when he found the note, but he was sure Sherlock’s face when John returned home would be memorable enough.

He was not disappointed. The secret fear (or hope) he’d had that Sherlock would simply ignore his absurd note and leave Harry at the airport was dispelled immediately when he walked into the flat and his sister was sitting in John’s own chair, sipping tea and eating a biscuit. Sherlock, on the other hand, was likely in his bedroom, if the tangible frustration flowing from that direction was any indication. John greeted his sister with a tight-lipped smile and a, “Harry,” which she returned in kind, before he said, “If you’ll excuse me for a moment,” and ran to both check on Sherlock and escape his blood relation.

Entering Sherlock’s room, the waves of frustration only grew thicker, and John was both cowed and amused, which, in some part of his mind, he recognized as only a bad sign for the remnants of his self-preservation.

“I wanted to say thanks for picking up Harry, Sherlock,” John said, “and the biscuits.”

Sherlock’s jaw clenched once, and he stared at John weightily so that John had the strange feeling that, perhaps, Sherlock was indeed as dangerous as they said, and John ought not to have dodged duty by pushing it onto a man who avoided duty like it was a lynch. But then Sherlock sighed heavily, as though greatly put upon, and his lips quirked in that not-smile facsimile that John had learned _was_ Sherlock smiling, and said, “Always the biscuits.”

John had a feeling, right then, that the biscuits might have meant something else, and while he was a truly intelligent man in his own right, between his sister sipping tea in the living room and John’s own truly frazzled nerves John just didn’t want to deal with it right then.

But that, right there, marked the stage where the biscuits became endearing, and John thought it best not to wonder how that had happened.

When John left notes for Sherlock, he knew that things would get done, and that was a good feeling. Conditioning, maybe, to have gotten Sherlock to behave like a proper flatmate, he thought, even if it required the use of their landlady and Sherlock’s own particular sense of effort.

So when John left a note asking for Sherlock to pick up biscuits and raspberries – because in the height of summer, what was better than a raspberry pie? And John felt like a bit of baking that evening – and what he found for himself was a tin of biscuits and fresh, picked raspberries in a lovely little crate on the counter, he felt that sort of effort deserved a thank you.

But Mrs Hudson was not the culprit. In fact, she said, “John, after all, I’m not your housekeeper, and I thought you’d gone back to buying all your groceries.” Which, of course, could mean only that either Sherlock had hired out for the groceries to be delivered, or that he was picking them up himself. With Mrs Hudson there and willing, it was unlikely that he was hiring out, however, so that left—

“You’ve been picking up the groceries yourself,” John said, standing in the doorway to Sherlock’s room as Sherlock tinkered with, well, something that might have been living once, but John really didn’t care to know.

Sherlock looked up with a somewhat irritated expression. “Why would you think that, John?”

“Because I just tried to thank Mrs Hudson for the incredibly fine raspberries she selected and she thought I was off my nut, so that means you must have done,” John said. He knew he was smiling like an idiot, but he couldn’t help it, and sometimes it wasn’t worth the bother, especially when Sherlock was involved. He’d have sussed out the feeling regardless, so why try?

“It can mean any number of things—“

“But it’s none of them,” John interrupted, ignoring Sherlock’s pursed lips. “Just admit it.”

“Absolutely not,” Sherlock said, setting his jaw.

John laughed. “At least admit to the biscuits,” he said, taking a few steps forward to lean against Sherlock’s desk.

Sherlock frowned as if to say one thing, then sighed, and said, “Fine. Fine, I admit to the biscuits.”

“Biscuits,” John said, laughing again. “You’re ridiculous.” He leaned down and kissed Sherlock firmly on the mouth, then broke to laugh again, “Biscuits!”

“It’s not that dratted funny,” Sherlock said, pulling him back and kissing him again.

“I know,” John managed, and then, “But yes it is.”

Then, the biscuits could never really mean anything else, but that didn’t stop John from leaving notes.

In fact, he left more notes, some of which were ridiculous by anyone’s standards, but there were always biscuits.


End file.
